


Moments Between Moments

by Jewels (bjewelled)



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-13
Updated: 2011-05-13
Packaged: 2017-10-19 08:44:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 18,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/199015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bjewelled/pseuds/Jewels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Selected scenes from a relationship between apostates. Anders/f!Hawke. A collection of vignettes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sleepless

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, the only part of this I really intended to write was related to one of the specialisation trees. The lore surrounding it was rather fascinating, and I was thinking about how it would work if you applied it to the characters and ignored the gameplay-story segregation. Somehow it grew into this. Damn you, Anders. Why must you make me <3 you so? The overall thrust is Anders/f!Hawke because I'm a sucker for tortured, angsty men, apparently. It's all those romance novels I've been reading.

**Sleepless**

~*~

Marian Hawke held her hands over the lava flow and grinned with astonishment. "It's some sort of Dwarven magic?" she asked, enthralled.

"Dwarves don't do magic," Anders reminded her, where he sat on the bedroll of their makeshift camp in the middle of a Deep Roads intersection. "I have no idea how the Dwarves stop the lava from heating the air. But the lava does have air pockets, which occasionally burst, and the hot rock is still very, very hot-"

Hawke immediately yanked her hands away from the lava and regarded it was she would a poisonous animal.

"I would heal you of course," Anders continued, smirking broadly, "But I wouldn't be above never letting you forget, for the rest of your life, that you stuck your hands in _lava._ "

Hawke scowled, and stuffed her hands in her pockets, walking back towards the makeshift camp they'd set up. Aveline and Varric were scouting nearby, looking for any obviously blocked off routes that they could avoid. Anders couldn't sense Darkspawn anywhere nearby, the only reason the pair had gone off alone whilst the two mages, ostensibly, rested.

It was hard to rest in the Deep Roads, though. Anders, because of the press of the Darkspawn at the edge of his consciousness, a sensation long absent and little missed, and somehow all the worse for the fact that he wasn't accustomed to it anymore, and Hawke because she seemed to have a hard time resting in the perpetual light of the Deep Roads. She only caught an hour or two at a time, whilst Aveline had no problem sleeping, claiming a soldier's life had prepared her for taking advantage of rest where it was provided. Varric showed no signs of being bothered either. He'd joked that his Dwarven ancestry was good for something.

Anders had learnt, in the Grey Wardens, how to push aside the nagging sensation of the taint, that ever-so-slightly sickening feeling that would put you off your food and keep you from rest if you let it. Which left Hawke as the only member of their party not able to get enough sleep. She was beginning to trip up, as the days went by, literally as well as figuratively. She tripped over her own feet more than once, and the power level of her spells varied wildly as her focus wavered. She'd taken to sleeping with a strip of cloth tied over her eyes, though it only partially succeeded in masking the light, and the bubbling of the lava was an unfamiliar sound that kept jarring her awake.

Anders had offered to magically enforce her slumber, but she had yet to take him up on the offer. For one, sleep spells were less effective, used repeatedly, and she had a naturally high resistance to them as a mage. She had said she preferred to save them as a last resort, and in the mean time she started to do strange things, like hold her hands over lava, when she was unable to sleep.

"I can't count past fourteen," she said, as if hearing his thoughts. She sat down on the bedroll heavily. "I think the contents of my skull are liquefying. It's going to start dripping out of my ears any moment."

"You should really try and get some sleep," Anders said, "I know you didn't want me to-"

"No," Hawke repeated, and lay down, throwing her arm over her eyes in a futile attempt to convince her mind that it was nighttime. "Talk to me. Tell me a story."

"A story?" Anders blinked down at her in surprise. At this angle, her robes were twisted and clung to her in an unwittingly revealing fashion. She didn't know he was looking, though, so he didn't feel compelled to look away. "I'm not exactly a bard."

"Tell me an old child's story. Make something up. I don't care. Anything to distract me." Hawke sighed a deep, weary sigh, and it was the vaguely hopeless note in her voice that convinced him to obey her wishes.

He thought of what stories he knew. He didn't really remember much in the way of stories from his life before he was taken to the Circle, and the stories apprentices told each other in the middle of the night when the Templars weren't watching wouldn't exactly be relaxing. Spine-chilling would be a more appropriate description. He considered briefly embellishing a tale from his more recent history as a Grey Warden or an apostate on the run, but those were nothing suitable for bedtime recitation either.

"How about a tale of brave Ser Pounce-A-Lot?" he said, shuffling his bedroll a little closer to hers so that he could speak in a lower, quieter, voice that wouldn't disturb her as much. "The Darkspawn-fighting cat of legend."

"Is this one of those good versus evil stories?" Hawke's lips curved into a smile, the only part of her face, apart from the tip of her nose, that he could see.

"Everyone likes a story of moral absolutes," he told her, in an upbeat tone, "It lets us forget how life really isn't like that. In the tales of Ser Pounce-A-Lot, good always defeats evil, everyone lives happily ever after-"

"And the girl always gets the boy of her dreams?" she asked, and there was a flirtatious note to her tone as she raised her arm to peek at him from under her lashes.

"In this story, yes," he demurred, and patted her shoulder gently, "Now close your eyes, and listen to the sound of my voice."

Abruptly, she giggled. "Tales of Ser Pounce-A-Lot. I get it."

"Hush." He tapped her arm reproachfully. "Ser Pounce-A-Lot was a brave and noble knight, and had dedicated his life and tail to defeating the evil Darkspawn." He drew out 'evil' in an appropriately sinister fashion.

He wove the story, improvising it on the fly, and it certainly didn't have the narrative cohesion of one of Varric's stories. If one were of a critical bent, they might criticise the contrived fashion in which a griffon swooped from the sky to save brave Ser Pounce from the clutches of the wicked Witch of the Weyrs, but by that point Hawke had fallen asleep, though if anyone were to ask, he would put it down to the soothing, compelling sound of his voice, and not the sleep spell he had been silently weaving with his hands as he spoke.

~*~


	2. o Brother

**o Brother**

~*~

He half expected to never see her again. Their venture into the Deep Roads had been unexpectedly fruitful, even without Betrand's betrayal, and the word around Darktown was that a family in Lowtown had come into money, and was moving up in Kirkwall. Anders knew that he'd been useful, that the maps he'd provided had aided her, but he was too long used to the way the undercity worked to feel resentful at the improvement in her fortunes. It had been refreshing to be around her, though. An apostate mage, who neither feared nor hated him, who smiled at him prettily and laughed at his admittedly pathetic jokes.

Which was why he was rather surprised when, a week after they'd returned from the Deep Roads, Marian Hawke had turned up in his clinic. At first, he'd been slightly suspicious, wondering what it was she wanted from him, but when he asked she shrugged and said she was just stopping by to see how he was doing. He had patients to see to, though, and since she so insisted on hanging around, then she had to help out, and he set her to carrying bowls of clean, hot water, their steam carrying the fragrant scent of antiseptic herbs. He made her cut bandages, and expected that she would become irritated with the grunt work and leave again, but instead she stayed, and listened when he showed her how to change a bandage to prevent infection, as healing magic worked better on clean, uninfected wounds, taking less out of him.

She spent the day there, helping, and when night deepened, the patients went away she stayed around, pointlessly folding blankets or sweeping the floor, and he was on the verge of asking her exactly what she was doing there when she sat down heavily on one of the beds, and stared listlessly at the broom in her hands. He watched her warily, not knowing what was going on.

"My brother joined the Templars," she said it flatly, in a rush, biting off the end of her sentence with viciousness.

He stiffened, panic momentarily flooding him. He found he wasn't sure what to say. "Is he-" he started, awkwardly.

She didn't look up at him. "He says he's not going to betray me. He didn't say anything about you. I... I don't think he would but... I thought you should know."

He took a deep breath, pushing back against Justice and trying to think on the matter rationally. "How long has he been with them?"

"Since..." Hawke shook her head. Her hair, limp from spending the day working in the damp and unpleasant conditions of Darktown, flopped with the motion. "I think since just after we left for the Deep Roads." She was gripping the broom like she gripped her staff, as if she wanted to start throwing fireballs at something. He crossed the room, and took it out of her hands gently. She resisted at first, and then let him take it away, lacing her fingers together, knuckles white.

"Then it's been a few months," he said, using the logical arguments in his head to push back Justice's agitation and keep his thoughts clear. "If he was going to turn either of us over he would have done it by now."

"My stupid, stupid brother. I don't know what I did to make him hate me like this. When I was little, and I had nightmares, it was always of the Templars coming for me, dragging me and Bethany away in the middle of the night, or my father, or..."

She broke off, blinking rapidly, though no tears fell.

"Stuck up little brat," she hissed, viciously.

He couldn't pass judgement on her view of her brother. He'd never had siblings, and the other mages in the Circle didn't count. "I'm sure he did what he thought was best," he said, trying to sound reassuring. "Or maybe he had a religious conversion."

Hawke snorted softly. "He'd have had to. Aveline thought he was too undisciplined for the guards. I give it a week before Carver gets kicked out."

Anders didn't know enough about her brother to agree or disagree, but it seemed that disparaging her brother's character was calming Hawke down. She looked less like she was about to crack a molar from grinding her teeth.

"I don't understand him," she said, after a moment. Then she seemed to come sort of decision and slapped her hands, palm down, on her thighs, and stood up. "But I do know I need a drink."

He expected her to just walk out then, so he was surprised when she glanced at him and said, "Hanged Man alright?"

He hesitated, and she must have realised some of his reluctance, because her eyes slid away from him and she frowned. "I promise not to jump you," she said, dryly.

"It's not that," he said, although why he was saying that instead of encouraging her to stay away was beyond him, "I just... Justice doesn't really let me get drunk anymore."

Hawke chuckled. "Then you'll be sober enough to notice when Isabela starts to cheat. I think I need to find a card game she doesn't know, like Shark, or Fizzbin." That dark, depressed air that had come over her was starting to ebb away, and he rather liked the relaxed look she showed as it left her. It made her eyes shine in a way that he had to force himself not to stare at.

"I think she probably knows them all," he said, "And how to cheat at them all."

"Then I need to make a new one up." Before he could stop her, Hawke had hooked her arm around his, and was walking them towards the door. He could feel the warmth of her body - mages always ran very hot - even through the sleeve of his coat. "And if I tell her that the naked priest is a wild card only on alternate tuesdays provided it's raining in the mage-rules of Wicked Grace, you have to promise to back me up. I'll buy you the most disgustingly fruity non-alcoholic drink in Corff's inventory, and if he doesn't have anything, I'll make him create one."

"It's a deal," he told her, and was rewarded with a rich laugh.

~*~


	3. Trickier Than You Think

**Trickier Than You Think**

~*~

One day, when most of the patients had left before night fell fully, she sat with him in the corner of his clinic, sharing tea with him, and she asked, "How does healing magic work?"

He looked at her in surprise, but there was nothing more disingenuous than honest curiosity on her face. "You... don't know?" he asked. He kept his voice low. They were alone in the clinic, the few who helped him having left for the day, but he knew very well how sound could carry when you wanted to remain unheard.

Hawke shrugged elegantly. Her fortunes had increased, but here in Darktown, she knew better than to advertise it. Her clothes were rough, practical, a holdover from her days in the slums. They draped over her in an ill-fit, masking what he knew from seeing her in better fitting robes to be an attractively curved figure. Nowhere near as top-heavy as Isabela of course-

Hawke was speaking. Anders blinked away his distracted thoughts and tried to pay attention to what she was saying. "I know how to throw fire, ice, twist gravity, but healing?" She wrinkled her nose. "I don't even get how that works. I know it _works_ , obviously, but how? Eveything I know about magic is all bang, crash, smite your enemies into the nearest wall."

"Your father taught you about magic, yes? I take it he didn't know much in the way of healing."

"He didn't know anything along those lines," Hawke said, shaking her head. "He taught me most of what I know. My sister, Bethany, showed me a few other things. But it wasn't like we did a lot of practicing. Mostly it was enough to know how to control it, and maybe how to hurl a fireball to distract the Templars before running like crazy."

He looked at her, and reminded himself that even the most junior of apprentices in the circle probably knew more about magic than Hawke did. Sometimes, she came across as frighteningly powerful, hurling tremendously destructive spells with confidence and precision, but he wondered how much of that was simply because she didn't know that the Circle considered these destructive powers to be dangerous and worthy of caution. She seemingly held no fear of posession by demons, so sure of her own mind that the idea she could be vulnerable never seemed to cross it. Anders' status as an abomination had never seemed to bother her.

"I suppose that makes sense," Anders said, slowly, "Healing is one of the more difficult skills a mage can work to acquire. It's not the loud, bang-crash of destructive magic. It's like..." He struggled for a moment to put it into words. "It's like having to be so still, so silent, that you can hear the song of a person's body, being so skilled that you can tune your own magic into harmony with them, and then guide the song, repairing the damage done to them, restoring order to chaos."

He hadn't looked at her during those few moment, his eyes falling to the table as, at his words, his own magic seemed to surge forward at the back of his mind, thrumming in his ears. As ever, the strong bass note of Justice threatened to overwhelm it, but, for now, it was all melded together, intertwined. One could not tell where he ended and Anders began.

Warmth touched his wrist, and he brought his head up. Hawke had her hand on his wrist, touching him lightly. Her hands were rough from years of hardwork. For some reason he'd thought her skin should be softer, more delicate, like the ladies of Hightown.

"Teach me," she said.

He was shaking his head before she'd finished asking. "It's too dangerous. Bad enough that I'm known to be an apostate mage, but if anyone were to catch you around me, learning from me-"

She laughed, cutting him off. "Oh Anders," she said, "I'm as much an apostate as you. I might as well be hung for the goose as well as the gander. Magic has always been..." Her fingers tightened briefly on his wrist; she still hadn't let go. She sighed tightly. "Magic has always been destructive. Deadly. Cook a few fools and intimidate some low life down on his shipments with a well-placed light show. That magic can be more..." She trailed off and looked down on her hand. Apparently realising what she was doing, she pulled her hand back.

He could still feel the faint afterimage of her fingers on his skin.

"You don't have to," she said, sounding somewhat tired, "I wouldn't force you to teach me anything."

He thought of putting her off from ever returning, pushing her away. It would be best for her. She was moving up in Kirkwall's social ranks through money and the doors it opened for her and her family. He thought about never seeing her again.

"I'll teach you," he blurted out, before he knew what he was saying.

The smile on her face was nothing short of blinding.

~*~

"Go down, deep within yourself. Look for the thread that is your magic, glowing and beautiful, what the poets called the silver bell of self."

Hawke cracked open an eye and looked up at Anders as he stood over her. "You're cute when you're scholarly."

Anders sighed and put his hands on his hips. "Hawke-"

"I'm no good at this!" her flirtatiousness, a constant aspect of their interaction, fled in the wake of the frustration she abruptly displayed. She unfolded her legs from the cross-legged position she'd adopted on the floor of Anders clinic and stood, taking a few stomping steps for good measure. It was the dead of night, the doors well bolted, and the local gangs knew better than to try and break in to steal from him. It was all too possible they would need his services, when they were unwilling to attract the attention of going to officially sanctioned healers, and so he had the privileged position of being somewhat immune from nighttime disturbances.

He also had a sneaking suspicion that Varric was paying them off.

He let her pace back and forth for a moment, running her fingers through her hair and then asked, "So how's your estate purchase going?"

She whirled on him, eyes bright and sharp and angry. "You want to talk about that now?"

He shrugged, affecting nonchalance. "You don't think you can do the magic, so why not? Have the former occupants given up their objections?"

His unwillingness to pander to her frustration seemed to take the wind from her sails somewhat. "Yes, I-" She took a deep breath. "My mother seems happy. She's getting her old childhood home back. Says she feels like a proper Amell again."

He went to find a pair of reasonably clean mugs, and to put the kettle on the boil. The water in Darktown was such that he would never offer anyone a drink that hadn't been thoroughly boiled first. The alternative was alcohol, but he'd learnt a very long time ago that he, alcohol, magic and Justice didn't mix well. "And your brother?" he asked.

With his back to her, he couldn't see her reaction, but he could hear her suck in a breath sharply. He'd rather hit a nerve, he assumed. It did rather prove his private theory that her distraction wasn't entire due to the difficulty of the magic.

"We don't talk," she said, flatly, "One or two letters exchanged. An assurance that he's happy, but he doesn't plan to turn me in."

He set the kettle over the fire and turned towards her. She'd stopped pacing, and her arms were folded, leaning against the wall. She looked tired.

"I tell myself that not all Templars are monsters," she said, softly, "Aveline's husband said a prayer over my apostate sister's body. But it's still hard."

He ached to take her in his arms, to stroke her hair and tell her that he would never let anything happen to her, that he would rather die before he let the Templars take her away. He wanted to tell her how her ascendancy to Hightown worried him, that she would attract unwanted attention, that a jealous noble would make an off-hand and suspicious comment to the Templars, and they would swoop in and drag her off to the Circle to be held prisoner or, worse, made Tranquil. She might even let him.

He couldn't do that. Couldn't let himself give in to temptation. That he even had such thoughts surprised him. Since Justice had joined him, his interest in the opposite sex had waned to the point of nonexistence. He'd occasionally thought of it with an abstract nostalgia, but hadn't missed attraction, flirtation or any of the things that went along with it. He'd assumed that part of him was dead. His mission was far more important.

Instead, he poured the now-boiling water into the teapot, before decanting two mugs. He handed one to her, and gave in to the temptation to let his fingers linger on hers as he handed it over. "Not if I have anything to say in the matter," he said, trying to sound light, and wondering if any of his true feelings came across with the statement.

Her lips tilted in a smile, and before he could react, she leaned forward and kissed him chastely on the cheek. There were traces of a faint floral perfume lingering on her skin that he was sure made the air seem headier than it actually was. "You're too sweet," she said, and some of her equilibrium seems to have been restored, if the glint in her eyes was anything to go by, "Can't I wrap you up and bundle you off home to keep all for myself?"

"Bad idea," he told her, quite honestly, though she laughed like it was a joke. She took a sip of the tea and grimaced at the temperature of it.

"Anders," she said, "Hasn't a woman ever told you that whenever you do that 'dark, tortured soul' routine that it just makes us want you more?"

~*~


	4. Finding Faith

**Finding Faith**

~*~

Hawke's hand in his felt cold, too cold. He rubbed her fingers, trying to get a little circulation back into them. She was pale, her lips bloodless, and if it weren't for the fact that she still breathed, and her eyes occasionally flickered under her lids, Anders might have been deceived into thinking she was dead.

That was a thought that didn't even bear thinking about. He didn't even particularly want to think about what he was doing to her at that moment.

Justice was a discontented presence at the back of his mind. They didn't communicate in full sentences, but they were able to understand each other perfectly. Justice at once thought this was a very bad idea, and that it was a waste of time, a distraction from their work. Anders steadfastly ignored him, and he liked to think it a mark of how Justice hadn't entirely succumbed to the corruption that plagued him that he didn't take over and force the issue.

Hawke had surprised him by how willing she was to pursue the healing side of magic. Healing spells were learnt quickly, once she had quieted her own mind enough, something that had come in time with her improvement in fortunes. She had a great deal of opportunity to practice healing magic as she dragged her friends out around the city and into the wilderness on one expedition or the other. Anders had accompanied her more than a few times, and it never failed to take his breath away when he saw her wreathed in light, bending the elements to her will, magic coming to her as easily as breathing.

"You can't always be there to help," she'd told him, when she'd intimated she wanted more thorough instruction in healing. "And what if you're the one who gets seriously hurt? I couldn't bear the thought of you dying for a lack of knowledge on my part."

When she said such things, it made him want to tell her the truth. But his own wariness, and Justice's disgruntlement, stayed his tongue. Instead, when she had mastered the limits of what standard healing spells could teach her, he reluctantly told her about the branch of magecraft the Circle called 'spirit healers'. She had listened carefully as he told her about the mages who were able to call upon the friendlier spirits of the Fade for the power to heal others, and his warnings about how the Templars watched spirit healers the most closely for a reason.

"Is it like you and Justice?" she asked, when he'd finished.

He shook his head. "Justice and I... we're one. You can't separate one from the other. Like you can't take a loaf of bread and separate the flour from the water. I can't really call to the Fade for help from other spirits. Healers call the friendlier spirits across the Veil for brief times, and they don't _merge_ as we have. The danger, of course, being that the mage mistakes a demon for a friendlier spirit."

"And how does one call them?" she said, leaning forward across the narrow table that separated them. They were in the Hanged Man, their voices conducting their conversation in whispers, even though it was a raucous night, and they were forced to move their mouths right next to the others ears to ensure that they would be heard by each other and no one else. No doubt they looked like a besotted couple.

Isabela was the centre of attention two tables away, engaged in a combination of drinking game and arm wrestling competition with a ship's captain that apparently she'd had dealings with in the past. She looked about two drinks away from hauling him to her room and having her way with him. It proved a very effective distraction from the pair who sat in the corner whispering to each other.

He shouldn't have answered her, but he did. "You go into the Fade," he said, "And convince them, or charm them, into helping you."

He'd hoped that would deter her, he knew that she'd never willingly gone into the Fade before to talk to spirits. He should had realised that he knew her well enough to realise that Marian Hawke wasn't deterred by the thought of something she'd never done before. She'd worn him down, convinced him with surprisingly logical and rational arguments, until he finally agreed to help her enter the Fade, even as everything in him screamed it was a bad idea.

Even though it wasn't designed to test, he knew that, essentially, he was putting her through a Harrowing. He'd tried to tell her, warn her that seeking out Fade creatures was a bad idea, but she'd shaken her head, determined, and reminded him that she knew her own mind, and she'd defeated enough demons to know what she was doing.

Which left them here, in the bedroom of her estate. She'd sent her dwarven servants out on some pretext that would have them gone all night, her mother spending the evening at a friend's estate across the other side of Hightown. It was just them, and a mabari hound who'd stared at Anders belligerently before completely ignoring him to go to sleep in front of the fire. The bowl of lyrium solution used to send her to the other side of the Veil lay on the floor, covered to prevent spills, and Hawke lay on the bed. Better than the hard floor of the Harrowing chamber that Anders remembered waking up on, aching and with vaguely disappointed Templars standing over him.

She wouldn't bring a demon back. It didn't even bear thinking about what he'd have to do. Even if he could bring himself to do anything. Perhaps he would simply let go, and allow Justice to be done.

Greatly daring, he raised her hand to his lips, and kissed her fingers gently. It wouldn't come to that. Not with Hawke.

The night wore on, and the fire started to dim, and he was just thinking of stirring the flames, getting up to put another log on it, when Hawke's eyes abruptly snapped open, and she sat up with no apparent regard for the fact that she had spent the last several hours unconscious.

"Hawke?" he asked, cautiously, fearing the answer.

She turned her head towards him and, for a moment, he got the sense that there was someone else there, peering out at the world from behind her eyes. Then she blinked, and there was only Hawke sitting there. "Wow," she murmured, "That was... very strange."

Relief spread out in a hot wave from his stomach, and he didn't realise how tightly he was gripping Hawke's hand until she squeezed back and gave him a reassuring smile. "What happened?" he asked.

"I was... walking around these twisted paths that never seemed to go anywhere," she said, raising her free hand to touch her forehead briefly. She made no effort to untangle their fingers, and resisted when Anders loosened his grip in a prelude to pulling away. "And I was starting to wonder if I was going to be lost forever when this person appeared."

"A spirit?" he asked.

He knew the answer before she shook her head. "A demon. It was pretty transparent. No imagination, I tell you, these demons." It must have rattled her. As she'd left the slums behind, Hawke's tendency towards sarcasm and biting humour had softened into a more genuine approach to situations, like she felt she didn't need to be so harsh anymore. She only took refuge in bad humour when she was uncomfortable. "It followed me, whispering, trying to tempt me, distract me. Eventually I fought it off, and kept searching. I was starting to think I wouldn't find anything other than demons and dreamers until I found this one spirit that had been keeping its distance, watching.

"It asked me how I had stayed so strong in the face of the demon's temptations. I told it I believed in myself, and in the friend who had taught me the paths of the Fade, and it said that was what had drawn it to me. It was the Spirit of Faith, it said, and asked me why I'd come. I said that I was searching for the aid of spirits for healing, and it seemed curious. It had known of other spirits who'd entered into these bargains, it said, and was willing to help me, if I proved myself."

Hawke took a deeply, somewhat shaky breath, and continued. "It asked that I put my trust in it, that it would do me no harm, and so I did. I let it cloud my mind enough that the visions it showed me seemed real. It tested me, how, I'm not sure. When the visions passed, the memory of them seemed as nothing more than a dream. The Spirit said it would help me, and it pushed me back through the Veil."

Anders wasn't entirely sure she was telling the truth when she said she didn't remember the tests of the Spirit of Faith, but he recalled his own forays into the Fade when he was learning the art of the Spirit Healer, and could understand the unwillingness to talk about what had happened. He raised his hand to touch her cheek, ostensibly to check whether warmth was returning to her skin, to tilt her head towards him so he could check her eyes for their responsiveness to light. But her breath caught as he touched her, and he couldn't stop himself from stroking a thumb across her cheek.

Her lips parted, and Justice thundered at the back of his mind. The effect was as a bucket of cold water; he pulled away, and pretended he didn't see the disappointment on her face when he stood and turned away. She was so resigned to his behaviour, though, that she didn't attempt to hold onto his hand. But she did stand, swaying on her feet for a moment before regaining her equilibrium, and said,

"Thank you."

He glanced at her, and shrugged faintly. "For what? Putting you in danger?"

She smiled and shook her head. "For having enough faith in me to let me do it, to help me go there, and to stay with me."

"I'm not going anywhere," he told her.

~*~


	5. Guiding In Light

**Guiding In Light**

~*~

The girl was almost completely dead when her mother brought her in, sobbing terribly. It had been a long, exhausting day in Anders' clinic, with a seemingly endless stream of patients, and he felt weary down to his bones. The exhaustion was such that it even seemed to have quieted the ever tumultuous Justice, though the spirit was roused at the sight of the girl. She was a child, still tiny and delicate, skinny in the way that most malnourished Darktown children were, and probably not even seven years old.

There were many threats in Darktown, and it seemed the girl had fallen foul of one of them. She'd been beaten, severely by the looks of the bruises that covered nearly all her exposed skin. She was cut, either from the impact of blows or from what could only have been knives. From the sobbed babbling of the woman in the arms of one of Anders' assistants, the girl had been raped repeatedly. She'd probably stumbled across a roving gang, or one had found her, and this was the result. Justice was sleepily uncoiling, his ire stirred by the sight of such depravity, but both he and Anders were exhausted from using their energy all day for a variety of surprisingly severe injuries. There was little more than a dribble of energy available to them to use, and while it would heal her to a certain degree, there just wasn't enough to bring her back from the very brink of death that she lingered at.

He couldn't save her, not alone. He wavered on the matter for a moment, but eventually his need to save the child won out, and he crossed to his desk, writing a quick note, being careful to underline specific requirements whilst trying to be as vague as possible in case it was intercepted, and then sealed the letter with a sigil sketched in the air over the paper. It would be invisible to anyone but a mage, and would cause the paper to burst into flames if an attempt to open it was made without dispelling the magic first. He gave it to one of the urchin children who helped out in return for a safe place to work during the days and ordered him to take it quickly and without delay to Serah Hawke's estate in Hightown, and make sure that it was put into her hands and only her hands. He also promised the child ten silvers from her to ensure his speed, knowing that Hawke wouldn't have a problem with paying the child.

As the urchin ran off, Anders returned to the child, whose mother was no longer coherent, and began cleaning her wounds as best he could with physical supplies. Magical healing would work much faster and efficiently if it didn't have to content with infection, and the scars would be cleaner.

The urchin must have run very fast indeed. Only half an hour later, Hawke arrived, and she had taken the time to follow his instructions. As much as he needed her help, and the child needed her, he didn't want her threatening her position by revealing herself as a mage to Anders' patients and their families. He was known to be an apostate, and while most stayed silent, it would only take one person to betray him. He wouldn't risk that one person with her. She wore encompassing robes, classical mage attire, and a hood that covered her entire head, leaving only her eyes visible. While they were striking eyes, they wouldn't give away her identity.

He saw her gaze light on the child, and those eyes widened. He gave the bloody cloth he was using on the child to his assistant, and pulled her over to the side to speak to her quietly. "I didn't intend for this to be your first introduction into spirit healing," he said, softly, though no one would pay any heed to what he was saying. The girl and her mother commanded all attention."But I need your help. The girl won't survive the night without proper healing and I... _we_ don't have the strength."

"Of course," she whispered, the words barely audible through the face mask, and if she was nervous, he couldn't tell. "Just tell me what to do."

"Call on the spirit with the intent to heal," he told her, "And I'll guide you through the rest."

She nodded, and he drew her back to the child's side. Her mother had stopped weeping now, and was watching the proceedings with raw eyes and a frighteningly blank expression. "You know what we have to do?" he asked her. It was always best to be sure. He had no intention of being attacked by a mother who suddenly panicked at the idea of magic being used on their child.

"It's why I brought her," the woman said, her voice cracking but firm. "Please help her."

Anders nodded, and gestured to Hawke to take up position on the opposite side of the girl's pallet to him. He held out his hands, and she placed hers in his grip. Her hands were cold, she was clearly nervous.

"Have faith," he murmured to her, and the crinkling around her eyes said she smiled in answer. She squeezed his fingers, and he felt the moment she reached for the Veil. Her eyes closed, and when they reopened, her striking eyes were edged by the ethereal glow of a spirit. It wasn't the direct merging that he had, and so one wouldn't be able to see it unless they were looking directly into her eyes. He could feel it through the contact that they shared, the peaceful, steadfast nature of the spirit she had called upon, the surety of belief, of faith, and knew she'd succeeded.

He let his own grip on reality soften, tapped into that deep well that was Justice, and felt the world change in the way it always did when Justice came so close to the surface. He didn't take over, though. Nothing would be served by tearing up Darktown in search of Vengeance, Anders only needed the raw power he could provide, and while it was still impressive, it was nowhere near the untapped, unexhausted power that he could feel from the woman opposite him. In unison, they let go of one another, and turned their palms towards the girl, magic spilling out as light, and tendrils reaching deep into the child to fix all that ailed her.

Time ceased to have any meaning, as it ever did in these moments. Most of Anders strength went to guiding Hawke who, though she was a well of energy, hadn't the experience to know where to direct it. In the end, she did the bulk of the healing, with him nudging her one way or another, telling her to reduce her power or increase it as needed. When the body was healed enough to house the girl securely, they brought her back together, cradling the light gingerly between them, and then suddenly it was done, and Anders snapped back to reality to see the girl on the pallet take a short, sharp breath.

Hawke's eyes still glowed with that alien light, and for half a second, he feared that the spirit wouldn't let her go. Then she blinked, and the light was gone. She took a staggering half-step backwards, as if she'd been leaning on something suddenly removed, and her hands started shaking. Anders' assistant, bless her, clearly recognised the signs from long association with her employer, and gripped Hawke's arm before she could fall over, leading her over to one of the other beds.

The girl started to groggily raise her head. "Mama?"

The girl's mother cried out, and flung herself forward to wrap her arms around her daughter, and started weeping anew, this time in relief. "Oh, ser, ser," she said, to Anders, "I don't know how to thank you. Bless you, ser. I only have a little, but all I have is yours. Everything."

One advantage of his associated with Hawke, beyond the simultaneous pleasure and torment that was her mere presence, was that after she received the proceeds for her expedition to the Deep Roads, she had shared it with her friends who had made her journey possible. Anders didn't have to worry about paying for supplies for his clinic, or food to eat.

Besides which, Anders never accepted money for healing. It felt somehow unclean to do so.

"Don't worry on the cost," he told her, but she was ignoring him, focusing on her rather confused daughter, who couldn't remember how she'd come to be in the clinic. That was the other small kindness that magical healing provided. It softened the memories, blunted them, so that the mind could properly deal with them, and the girl's mind had decided to deal with it by blocking the recollections completely. That was probably for the best.

The girl and her mother taken care of, he went to Hawke, who was having a hot cup of something pungent forced into her hands by his assistant. The elven girl gave him a quick, tired smile, and left them alone. Anders knelt in front of her.

"You should drink that," he told her, "It'll restore your strength."

"I'm not sure I can lift it up," she whispered, shakily.

He moved to sit next to her on the bed, and, since her back was to the rest of the clinic, unfastened the part of her hood that concealed her face, and wrapped his hand around hers and helped her raise the mug to her lips. She looked nearly grey. The moment the liquid touched her lips, she compulsively took three large gulps. It was probably best that she didn't know what was in it.

"It always takes it out of you the first time," he said, as she lowered the mug with his aid.

"That was terrifying," she admitted, her voice slightly hoarse. "But.... we helped that girl. Didn't we?"

Anders nodded. "She'll be fine. Won't even remember what happened, probably."

Hawke's mouth relaxed from the tight line it had been in. "Terrifying," she repeated, "But amazing. I've never felt anything like that before. I could... I could _feel_ you pointing me this way and that. Is it always like that?"

He hesitated, and shook his head. "I'm not sure. Most of my early training was done under circle mages or with other apprentices who weren't apostates with free wills of their own. Everyone deals with the spirits in different ways."

She sighed, a soft sound and motion. "Worth it," she murmured, and leaned sideways so that her head rested on his shoulder. She breathed once, and then her eyes closed and she slipped into sleep.

He let himself put his arm around her shoulders, and rest his cheek against the top of her head, breathing in the scent of her.

~*~


	6. The Staff of Parthalan

**The Staff of Parthalan**

~*~

"Going somewhere?"

No one could sneak up on him these days. Anders was pretty sure that it was the effect of playing host to a spirit of Justice turned demon of Vengeance that gave him an _enhanced_ awareness of his surroundings and the people in them. So he wasn't surprised by Marian Hawke's in the sense that he had known she was present, but he _was_ surprised at the fact that her presence was taken for granted to the point that she hadn't impinged on his conscious awareness. The sound of her voice startled him, and he turned, belatedly realising she'd been there all along.

He wondered what that meant.

He'd been cleaning out and carefully repacking a carrysack, making sure that he had the right number of pots and vials, clothes and the little knives he needed for his task. "Going shopping," he said, cheerfully.

Marian looked amused. She folded her arms and rested her hip against his writing desk.

"Going herb gathering along the Wounded Coast," he admitted, and slung the sack over his shoulder, moving to pick up his staff. "Raw ingredients for potions and poultices are a little out of my price range. Much cheaper to go gathering myself. Besides, then I know exactly the quality of the ingredients, and how fresh they are."

To his surprise, Marian looked guilty. "Varric's still selling off the treasure from the Deep Roads," she said, "The coin hasn't come through yet, but I promise you'll get your share when it does."

He paused, fingers closing around the shaft of his weapon, and shook his head. "I didn't go with you to seek my fortune, you know. I went because you asked."

She went bright red, and scratched the tip of her nose, and it was on his tongue to tease her about how cute she looked when embarrassed when she said, "I... well. You were as much a part of the expedition as any of us. Nearly got killed too. It's the least I owe you."

He wondered if he should make some token protest about not needing her charity, but the fact of it was that he really could use some extra coin. He never charged his patients, and occasionally it was hard to scrimp up enough to buy food or the very light ale that was all Justice would let him consume. It wasn't alcoholic enough to get him even slightly drunk, and it was definitely safer than the water. He knew he'd lost a lot of weight, and he sometimes wondered if it was the Fade spirit inside him that meant he hadn't collapsed already. If he'd been one of his patients, he would have been worried.

Instead he said, "Would you like to come? Consider it part of your ongoing education into the healing arts."

Marian smiled. "I was going to go with you anyway. Surely you know better than to wander around the coast on your own."

He gave her a wry look, and she shrugged in return. They both knew damned well that it would take more than a few bandits to bring him down, but she was kind enough to pretend otherwise. It was almost reassuring that she tried to treat him like he was normal.

It was late spring, edging into summer, and so while the days were warming up, the air still carried the lingering sharpness of spring. Occasionally, fog rolled in off the sea, and doused the city in opaque mist. Such had happened earlier that morning, and was only starting to be burned away by the midday sun. Sometimes bandits tried to use fog as a cover, although it worked against them more often as not. Either way, they were left unmolested, leaving Hawke to scowl and rake her hands through her hair, making comments about the terrible things the moisture was doing to it.

"Your hair is fine," he told her, "As gorgeous as ever."

She went pink at that, but stopped complaining about the mist.

She spotted an Elfroot bush quickly enough. It grew almost like a weed in some parts of the Wounded Coast, untapped resources that herbalists from Kirkwall were too scared of bandits and bad weather to seek out. Anders feared neither of these things, but he shook his head at the first example of the plant that Marian found. She scowled, looking it over.

"What's wrong with it?" she asked.

"It's too young a plant," he said, "The roots won't have reached their full potency, and it makes it pointless to harvest. You find a lot of cheaper potions use younger Elfroot. Tastes sweeter, and you don't have to wait as long for cultivated stock to mature."

She frowned, reaching out to rub a leaf between her fingers. It left a green smudge on her fingers that Anders knew would smell faintly citrus-like. "How can you tell?"

"The older plants are ugly bastards," he said, with a grin, and jerked his head further up the path. "Let's try this way."

They climbed a steep section of pathway, neccessitating grabbing onto outcroppings of rock as handholds in one or two spots. For a while, the only sound in the air was the crashing of waves, the creeling of distant birds, and the harsh exhalations of a pair of mages climbing.

"Regretting coming with me yet?" he asked, as she nearly slipped and cursed.

Marian snorted inelegantly, and he grinned. "Up here," he said, catching sight of something promising. A little more scrambling that sent sand flying, and Anders knelt by a plant that most textbooks described as 'bulbous' but that he personally would call 'knobbly'. The Elfroot had long since gone to seed, and its leaves were starting to dry out and curl up, a brief tug being all it took to pull one of them off. It wasn't dead yet, just at the very end of its life cycle, and Anders made a noise of satisfaction and as Marian struggled up the last few feet to him, he knelt down, clearing away the plant debris that littered the ground.

"Might as well make yourself comfortable," he told her as she reached him, doing her best to pretend she wasn't sweltering in her heavy robes. "This is going to take a while."

"You're right," she said, looked at the Elfroot. "It _is_ an ugly bastard."

She settled on a rock jutting out of the ground, and settled the staff she carried in her lap. As Anders opened his sack, looking for his small dull knife, best for harvesting Elfroot, she took out from her belt pouches a folded cloth and a small pot of wax. She worked the wax into the wooden shaft of the staff with barely a glance, eyes flickering between watching their surroundings and watching Anders.

He remembered how well she took care of her staff from the Deep Roads. Most mages didn't really need to worry about caring for their weapons. They were a focus more than anything, a tool of augmentation rather than the only thing standing between them and a bloody death, as it was with non-mage fighters. A soldier who didn't take care of their sword was a dead soldier, but mages had weapons if all they had were the clothes on their backs. As a result, there were a fair number of easily available but cheaply made staves. Most mages had no idea how to care for them and went through them without a thought. But every night, Marian had taken out wax and carefully rubbed it into the shaft, and then oil to work into the blade. She was thorough, and precise, and the staff gleamed when it was done.

It was an old weapon, very old. It had to have been cared for in such a fashion for its entire life to still be in such good condition. He jabbed his knife into the dirt, loosening the packed earth, exposing the roots. "Your take care of your weapons," he said, for lack of anything better to say, "A bit unusual in a mage."

"As an apostate," Marian said, with a smile that said it was something she had said to others before, "I should know about how to take care of my weapons. You never know if someone will refuse to sell me a new one when I let the wood rot and it snaps in the middle of a fire spell."

"Your father?" he asked.

"My father," she confirmed, and chuckled. "The first staff he gave me broke when I forgot to take care of it and I froze half the brook in high summer. Luckily, no one checked on the water that far upstream." She gave the staff a final swipe, and tucked away the wax. "Besides. This thing deserves to have some care taken over it."

He paused in chopping off roots and wrapping them in oilcloth. "May I?" he asked, extending a hand. She nodded, and he reached out, resting his fingertips on the staff.

It was a good staff, no doubt about that. Not so precise a focus as some modern variants, but it had its own note, like a plucked harp string resonating on a level no one but mages could hear. It also felt wrong, dissonant when he touched it. He would be able to use it, no doubt, but it wouldn't work as well for him as it would for Hawke, he realised. Her magic rang harmoniously with it, more than could be accounted for just by cleaning it every day.

"It matches you," he said, as he brought his hand back.

"It was my father's," she said, softly, which explain a lot. It was attuned to her family. Or many her family was attuned to the staff. Her fingertips traced the woodgrain with a confidence that said she had performed the same motion many times before. "It was his father's, and his father's before him. It even has its own story. Want to hear it?"

He tore his eyes away from watching her lovingly caress the shaft, and forced himself to look at the Elfroot. It was much less interesting to look at. "Of course," he said, "I'm always up for a good story."

"Don't say that around Varric. I think he's planning to publish a book about a renegade guardsman where everything explodes. He'll probably make you proof read it if you say you're interested."

Anders groaned in appropriately dramatic fashion.

Marian giggled and then fell silent. When she spoke again, her voice rose and fell in the cadence of one reciting a story long memorised.

"In the time of King Calenhad, long ago before Ferelden existed as we know it today, there was a mage called Parthalan. He was an ally of the King, and helped him unite the land. But a mage so close to the King evoked a jealous rage from those who had not the King's confidence, and fear from those who did not understand. Rumours and lies were started, and spread, and eventually he fled, the Chantry at his heels, his hope that mages would one day see freedom as yet unfulfilled. His staff passed down to his children, and their children, and their children, and with each generation, the story was given along with the staff. Parthalan once hoped for freedom, and that hope endures."

Marian sighed softly. "The Chantry tells a different story of Parthalan, that he was a corrupt Tevinter magister, but I prefer to think of my family's story as the right one, and the Chantry's as propaganda. How better to destroy a hope than to claim it is so heretical as to be evil?"

She fell silent for so long that he thought she was finished. When he looked at her, she was staring at the staff with suspiciously bright eyes. He set aside his herbalism, and shifted so that he was kneeling in front of her and laid his fingers on the back of her hands. She blinked, and raised her eyes.

"Its important to you," he said, in realisation, and something in his soul was buoyed by that knowledge. She _understood_.

"It's important to the Hawkes," she said, then bowed her head in admittance, "But it's important to me too. That story, that _hope_. Not just because of me, but because of my father, Bethany, Karl, Merrill..." She turned her hands over, and captured his fingers before he could withdraw. "You," she added, softly. She raised his hands to her lips, and kissed the back of his fingers. He let her, and his stomach twisted in an achingly familiar fashion, one he'd thought was long since lost to him.

"Even my brother," she murmured.

Anders frowned slightly.

"He joined the Templars because he wanted to be more than he is, wanted to become part of something greater. I wish I didn't have to be afraid of him because of that."

He could have kissed her at that moment. She would have let him, welcomed it even. But he couldn't let her, for her own sake if nothing else. His life was dangerous. He was associated with people that would get her arrested if she knew about them. He was involved in subverting the Templars' authority, and if she were ever tied to that, it would end very badly for her. He couldn't do that to her.

So instead of kissing her, he squeezed her hands, and pretended to himself that he didn't see the disappointment in her eyes. "Help me find some embrium," he said.

~*~


	7. That Dreaded Moment

**That Dreaded Moment**

~*~

"Anders, isn't it?"

Anders looked up from where he was slowly stirring honey into his tea, and nearly dropped his spoon. He wasn't sure why he was surprised. The presence of Leandra Hawke in her own home shouldn't have been a shock, but somehow, he had completely forgotten her existence, and the fact that she might wonder at the presence of a half-dressed strange man in the kitchen of her home.

It was what most might refer to as obscenely early in the morning, before the servants in the Amell household rose for the day, so Anders, unable to sleep, emotions and half-formed thoughts swirling around in his mind, had left his lover sleeping in her bed upstairs and come to the kitchen to heat water and make tea. He wondered if it was the quiet that left him so restless. One normally couldn't go through a single night in Darktown without hearing someone getting mugged.

"My lady," he said, awkwardly, and tried to remember if Leandra had been at home when he'd arrived the night before. Neither he nor Marian had been quiet during the night. Anders had been half mindless, driven by three years of suppressed desire, and it seemed that Marian was incapable of silence during the act. At the time, there had been a certain amount of pride in driving her to that point, but now, looking at her mother, all he could wonder was how much she had heard.

"Leandra, please," she murmured. "It seems somehow appropriate." She had heard a great deal then. Anders wondered if the ground would be kind enough to swallow him whole, but, alas, nothing happened. "Is there any more of that tea? I think you already found the cups."

Anders took the suggestion for the request it was, retrieved another cup and poured her some from the pot he had brewed. She took some of the honey for herself, and they sat on opposite sides of the kitchen table in silence for a few moments, sipping the tea.

"You remind me of him," Leandra said, suddenly, breaking the pre-dawn silence.

Anders, surprised by the sudden speech, jumped, "I'm... sorry?"

"You," Leandra said, her lips curving into a smile, "Remind me of him. My husband, Malcolm. Has Marian ever told you around him?"

"She told me that he taught her, and her sister, how to control their magic. She said he died a few years ago." Anders looked at the dregs of his cup, where the tea leaves were starting to cling to the sides. "Not much more than that."

"I think the memory of him is tied up in the memory of Bethany. It's all very hard for her to recall." Leandra propped her chin on her fist, looking at him with a frank and scrutinising expression. "My husband was a free spirit. A wild bird trapped in the cage of the Circle of Magi. Years ago, before Meredith was anywhere near the rank of Knight-Commander, the Mages of the Circle intermingled more with the people. They held markets in the Gallows, where the Circle sold enchantments and magical potions. When I met Malcolm, he was a teenager, like me, and he hadn't been in the Circle long. They let him help out at the stalls, and we would meet there, and steal away as many scant minutes as we could manage. He dreamt of a world where he, a mage, was free to love whoever he chose. The most we could do was to run away, to make that world a reality for just the two of us. I think if he hadn't had children, if it hadn't put them both in danger, he might have pursued that goal more... actively."

Leandra smiled softly. "Marian gets much of her spirit from him. Her careless attitude to the Templars. Her fearlessness."

"Her foolhardiness?" Anders suggested, with a smile.

"That too," Leandra agreed. "My daughter has always been headstrong. The decisions she's made have not always been in her own best interests."

Anders took a deep breath, and tried to quell the unusual sense of discomfort that was churning in his stomach. He wasn't as nervous when he was dealing with apostates under the nose of the Templars. "Including me?"

"You're as much of an apostate as she is. It seems to me that you share equal risk in this city full of Templars. Unless, of course, there's something you're not telling me, Anders. _Are_ you more of a danger to my daughter than you let on?"

"I..." To his dismay, his voice cracked. He cleared his throat and tried again. "I'm afraid I'll break her heart. I love her," and that part was so easy to say that it felt strange, "But I'm afraid that won't be enough."

Leandra took a deep breath and stirred an extra spoonful of honey into her tea. She sniffed it briefly before taking a drink. Anders let her collect her thoughts. "When he escaped the Circle, Malcolm came to my home, this house. He scaled the vines at the wall and climbed in through the window in the middle of the night. He was wearing stolen clothes, and had a desperate, wild-eyed look to him. He told me he was leaving Kirkwall, running for wherever the ships would take him. He said that if I was the smart, clever girl he fell in love with, I wouldn't go with him, that I would stay with my family, in our Hightown estate, and grow up happy and safe and without a care in the world. But he loved me too much not tell me that he wanted me to go with him. He was a passionate man, my husband, and he told me he ached for me, and would continue to do so until the end of his days, even if I didn't go with him. I left that night, leaving only a note behind. I never regretted it for a moment."

"Even though he died?" Anders couldn't bear to look at her, the woman who seemed to be his beloved many years from now, a glimpse into the future, embodied in a woman of noble bearing and grace.

"I would rather have had the few years I had with Malcolm, then none at all. And I know my daughter feels the same way about you." Leandra stood, disposing of her half-empty cup in the sink, and, on her way out of the kitchen, paused to settle her hand on Anders' shoulder. "Whatever you fear is in your future, don't sacrifice what time you have."

She bent down, and kissed him on the forehead in a manner that stirred distant memories of his own mother. "And now," she said, "I'm going back to bed. Someone kept me up all night with the loudest noises."

~*~


	8. Rumours Of My Demise

**Rumours Of My Demise**

~*~

Hawke had a death wish. That was the only explanation, and Aveline had three very good reasons to believe it was the correct one. Firstly, Marian Hawke had challenged the Arishok to a one-to-one duel. Secondly, she was a Mage, and Aveline had tried and failed repeatedly to get her to indulge in any sort of physical regimen that would involve building up strength. She had no idea how to dodge blows, only endure them, relying on her speed to get her out of the way and her magic to keep the Arishok beyond arm's reach. And thirdly, she was an _apostate_ mage who had just revealed herself as such before the entire nobility of Kirkwall.

And if that wasn't bad enough, Aveline had to hold onto Anders wrist, who looked like he would throw himself into the fray at any moment to tear the Arishok's head from his body. There wasn't the cracked, blue-veined skin and frightening glowing eyes yet, on the contrary, Anders looked terrified rather than wrathful, but the last thing Aveline needed was to have him interrupting and revealing himself as an abomination at the same time. Aveline would be lucky if the Chantry _only_ arrested him.

She squeezed his wrist tightly and glowered at him as he glared at her. "Now is not the time," she muttered to him as the Arishok landed a slice across Hawke's torso that caused what looked like rock dust to fall to the floor, rather than blood. Aveline had never been so glad to see apostate magic at work, though she could see that Hawke was flagging. The constant running was wearing at her, and the Arishok was strong, more like an unstoppable force of nature than anything alive.

Anders' jaw clenched, and he said nothing. Truth be told, if Hawke fell, and he didn't intervene to stop that happening, Aveline wasn't sure any of them would be able to withstand the reaction. Vengeance was vengeance after all, and she knew exactly what had happened between Hawke and the healer.

Aveline was morally opposed to anything that might be considered 'girl talk'. One did not become a respected member of the guard by talking about the latest fashions and hairstyles and painting her nails with the shiny lacquer the nobles favoured. But they had sat in Aveline's office, and Hawke had looked so _happy_ that it had been hard to give into the urge to shut down the conversation. She told Aveline what had happened with Anders, and the offer she had blurted out to him, for him to live with her, and as she spoke, Hawke had twirled a strand of hair in her fingers, looking impossibly young and girlish. Aveline couldn't ever remember seeing her friend look that way; the first time they'd met, Hawke had the same haunted expression that her entire family wore having just seen their home overrun by Darkspawn.

So she'd let her friend giggle, and then told her about Donnic taking her to one of the parks in Hightown, and they'd acted like teenage girls for a good two hours before Hawke had left to go and make sure Anders was moving into her home alright.

Aveline stepped back at waves of heat washed over her. Hawke was throwing fireballs around, causing the Arishok to grunt in pain - where another creature might bellow in agony - as his skin crisped. Aveline had a moment's thought of what might happen if Hawke set the building on fire. But the flames were magical, and extinguished themselves before they caught on the carpet.

Hawke was staggering sideways, looking dazed. She looked depleted, almost grey, and then, sharply, vigor washed over her skin. Aveline had a moment's thought that she had used her own magic to heal herself, but then she felt Ander's hand twitch under hers, and she glanced at him to see him staring at Hawke with narrowed eyes, his mouth moving imperceptibly.

It wasn't flashy, it wasn't obvious, and it might help them. Aveline did nothing to stop him.

The Arishok was building to charge headlong at Hawke again, but the mage planted her feet firmly on the ground, set her mouth in a line of grim determination, and gripped her staff tightly in one hand. Aveline knew that look. It was the look of someone that knew this was their last chance, that if they didn't survive the next moment, then that would be the end of them. Aveline's hand found the hilt of her sword, reading herself to leap into action should Hawke fall and their last hope fail.

The Arishok roared a challenge, and moved, inhumanly fast, barrelling towards the woman who seemed intent on _not moving out of the way_. Hawke waited, and waited, and Aveline nearly screamed at her to do _something_ , when suddenly Hawke's hands moved. She didn't perform her magic with the same dance-like grace as Anders, or the pure deadly power of Merrill, but she had a focus about her that even Aveline, ignorant as she was in the ways of mages, could see. Her gestures were tight, controlled, and as the Arishok came to three steps away from knocking her down, she gestured, and everything seemed to slow down, becoming heavier. Aveline was far away from the epicentre of whatever spell that Hawke was casting, one that she'd never seen before, but she felt like her armor was pulling her down and towards the centre of the hall. Breathing became more difficult.

And the Arishok's charge slowed.

Hawke drew her staff to a ready position behind her back and with her free hand, gestured up sharply. The force of her spell sent the shattered remains of a nearby vase shooting towards the ceiling, but the Arishok himself didn't fly nearly so far. But he was pushed, ever so slightly, off the ground, and as he continued to move, carried by his own momentum, he started to travel upwards, directly over Hawke's head.

Aveline had criticised her friend's lack of martial prowess more than once, though she had seen her training with the staff, she had never seen her use it as anything other than a spell focus. She had imagined that the twirling and jabbing was all part of the magic being cast. She had never seen any of the mages she knew, apostates all, using it as anything else. She had assumed the wicked-looking blades were just for decoration. How utterly wrong she was.

As the Arishok's now uncontrolled charge took him up and over Hawke, she moved, bringing her staff up and across, the duel-headed blade on the end of the weapon slicing through burnt flesh with the ease of hot wire through cheese. Aveline had a moment to wonder, stunned, if the blade was enchanted to be so sharp when Hawke twisted, and delivered another slicing blow, one that went deep, into the Arishok's stomach. She took a third and final step, completing the move with such ease that it had to be well practiced, and, just as he was nearly past her completely, lodged her blade in the Arishok's throat, and sliced that open too.

The spell released with an audible crack, and the Arishok fell to the floor much slower than he had been moving, most of his momentum expended. He clutched at his throat, and maybe he would have gotten up to finish fighting, but Hawke spun the staff to its weighted end, and smashed his skull in.

The Arishok stopped moving. He stopped breathing. And for a moment, nothing seemed to happen. Then the Qunari were withdrawing, and the nobles were screaming in relief, crying and cheering, and someone started to yell 'Champion' and then all of the room were standing there, chanting 'Champion! Champion!' and Hawke was just standing there, looking dazed.

Hawke was leaning heavily on her staff, and Aveline was suddenly and acutely aware that her friend was covered in blood and it wasn't all the Arishoks, then Hawke coughed and there was blood on her lips, and Anders was hissing, "Let go of me!" and twisting out of her grip.

She let him go and watched as he hurriedly crossed to Hawke's side. He reached her just as her knees started to buckle, grabbing her arm to hold her up and then putting his arm around her waist to secure her. Fenris moved forward too, holding up her other side, and Aveline realised that she should probably do something, and spoke up, distracting the crowd's attention from Anders and Fenris carrying Hawke out of the way. They were heading in the direction of the guard barracks. Good. That was out of the way and secure.

"Good people," she called, and waited for them to quiet enough to listen to her, "Serah Hawke has defended us from the Arishok, but I ask that you remain within the keep for now. We must secure the rest of the city. The guards will remain outside. This is the safest place in the city." She would have to have someone clear away the body of the Viscount and the Arishok before someone took fright.

Aveline turned towards the great doors of the Keep, only to see, framed in the doorway, Meredith, Knight-Commander of Kirkwall, who had no doubt just witnessed an apostate flagrantly use magic against another being. Aveline had a moment's dread not unlike that when she realised that the Qunari would no longer sit quietly in their dockside home, but all Meredith did was purse her lips thoughtfully, turn and walk out.

Her second, Cullen, lingered a moment longer, looking after Hawke, but after a moment, he too left, and Aveline felt light-headed with relief.

It was hours before she made it back to the Keep, assured that the Qunari had indeed stood down from their assault. Hawke had been put on a cotbed that had been dragged into Aveline's office, the only room in the barracks that would afford any privacy, and Anders stood over her hands moving over Hawke's body, an ethereal glow clinging to his skin. Hawke looked much recovered from her ordeal, though thoroughly unconscious, so Aveline hoped that Anders wasn't being forced to do anything major. His words contradicted that hope, though.

"Those body blows ruptured internal organs," Anders muttered, as the light died away and he sat down heavily in a chair pulled up to the bed. She hadn't thought he'd been aware of her entrance. He'd been alone. Varric had been outside comforting Merrill, who had never seen open warfare in the streets before, but who had acquited herself remarkably well in the battle, Aveline thought, and Fenris wasn't to be found.

Isabela, of course, had fled like the cowardly whore Aveline always knew she was long before the battle started.

"Will she-?" Aveline found that she didn't want to ask the question, was frightened of the answer. It seemed strange to think that Hawke was her last tie to her old life, but she was the only thing connecting Aveline to Wesley now, and the years had granted them a deep friendship. Aveline couldn't bear the thought of losing that.

"She'll live," Anders said, sounding exhausted beyond measure. "Though I'm tempted to kill her myself for the fright she's given me."

Aveline frowned, and looked down at her gauntlets rather than stare at Ander's pale face, his bloodshot eyes. "There were Templars there. At the end. I think they saw..." she trailed off. He could fill in the rest himself.

Anders tensed, but there was no blue flash that Aveline feared, and his voice was tight but not angry. "Well," he said, neutrally, "They're not banging the door down, so they've either decided to wait to gather enough forces to bring her in, or Meredith has other things in mind."

Aveline was about to ask how he could be so casual about this, when she realised that being pursued by Templars probably wasn't a new experience for Anders. Besides which, anything she might have said was cut off when Hawke stirred on the bed, her hand flopping listlessly and her head twitching.

Aveline might as well have vanished completely. All evidence of exhaustion disappeared as Anders sat forward and reached out to tenderly take Hawke's hand in his. He stroked damp hair back from her face, and ran the back of his fingers over her cheek. Hawke's eyes fluttered open and she stared up, unfocused, at Anders, and then her lips tilted into a faint smile.

"Did I win?"

"Even the Arishok couldn't break that thick head of yours." Anders bent his head, and brushed his lips against hers. "You were magnificent."

Aveline felt like she was witnessing something private, but was reluctant to move and draw attention to herself.

"I take back anything bad I ever said about your staff training," Hawke whispered. Her voice was reedy, but her eyes shone as she looked at Anders. Aveline had known how much Anders felt for her, it had been obvious for any of them to see for three years, but she hadn't realised just how much of it was returned. She hadn't realised that Anders was such a handy fighter, if that was where Hawke had learnt her techniques from.

"Trust the ex-Warden when he tells you that you need to move your feet more. You still haven't learnt how to duck."

Hawke smiled faintly. "I'll bear that in mind for next time."

Anders kissed her again, feather soft. "Go to sleep, my love."

Aveline didn't know whether Anders cast a spell or not, but Hawke's eyes closed almost immediately, and her breathing slowed. Anders leaned back, but his eyes never left her face, and he didn't let go of her hand. Aveline decided that she really ought to see if Donnic was anywhere nearby, and left as silently as she could.

~*~


	9. Promises

**Promises**

~*~

When Leandra Hawke was murdered, Anders had no idea what to say. Marian was quiet, quieter than he'd ever seen her. She would stare for hours into the fire, and her mabari hound cried quietly to himself by Leandra's door, offering a melancholy counterpoint to the silence that permeated the house.

He tried anyway, saying something that seemed pathetic and inadequate, and she thanked him, so he couldn't have messed it up too badly. "Whatever you need," he told her.

She didn't say anything for a moment, staring at nothing in particular, then she leaned into him, shuffling on the bed, picking her feet up onto the mattress, and settled her head in his lap. He could feel her trembling, and her breath hitched awkwardly. Tears fell, but utterly silently. She pressed her lips together and closed her eyes, determined not to make a sound.

He rested one hand on her shoulder, and stroked her hair with the other. He wishes he could help more, take her pain away, but there was nothing more he could do than simply be there for her. Even Justice was sated with the knowledge that the man who had killed all those women had been killed in turn. There was no one left to blame but the Maker, for his unfairness in dealing an untimely death to Leandra.

Marian had wrapped her fingers in his overcoat, gripping tightly as if she were afraid that he might get up and leave. Maybe she _was_ afraid of that. Her parents and sister were now dead, her brother a Templar and clearly with no intention of dealing with his sister again. He hadn't even sent a note in response to their mothers death. It was just her, and her house, and the servants that rattled around. And him.

When she spoke, he thought that he was imagining her voice for a moment, she spoke so softly. "She liked you," she said, "Said you reminded her of my father. She was worried about bringing even more mage blood into the family. I told her that it wasn't exactly a worry at the moment, and she laughed."

Leandra Hawke hadn't ever really spoken much to the man who her daughter had brought into the house. She always been polite to him, though, and she'd seemed to be a kind person.

"She was a good woman," he said, honestly, and left the unspoken thought, of children, with _her_ , unremarked upon. There was no hope of such a thing for him.

"Don't leave me, don't ever leave me." He wasn't sure she even knew what she was saying. Her trembling had intensified. "You're all I have left."

His hand tightened on her shoulder, and he wondered if he should lie to her. "Never willingly," he told her, which seemed to satisfy her, and was truthful to a point. He never wanted to leave her, but he knew there was the very real possibility that he would, even if it wasn't what he wanted to do.

~*~


	10. The Turning of the Screws

**The Turning of the Screws**

~*~

Anders felt like there was a spring at the back of his mind, or somewhere in stomach or his spine, or maybe it was his whole body. He felt like someone was tightening the spring. His muscles felt like they were clenched into permanent knots, leaving him jumpy, twitchy, and he sometimes only realised he was grinding his teeth when he gave himself a headache. The only time he ever felt a relief from the ever-growing tension, that unbearable sensation of being about to snap, was when he was with _her_.

He would walk into the library of her estate, and see her sitting next to the fire, feet curled under her, a copy of one of Varric's tawdry tales open in her lap, a guilty pleasure of hers no matter how much she denied it, and his body would unwind, loosen, and he'd suddenly remember how to feel Human again. He walked over to her, and touched her cheek gently, stroking his fingertips across flesh that was remarkably unblemished, given her violent life, and she would raise her face to look at him, her eyes soft in the lambent firelight.

She smiled then, and he bent to kiss her softly, lingeringly, wishing that these scattered moments of sanity would never end. She never questioned these moments of his, when he had to remind himself that he was more than a vessel of animate revenge, and that possibly made him love her more. She was busy these days, out of the estate and playing Champion for Kirkwall. There was talk amongst the nobility, Anders knew, that the Grand Cleric would officially sanction the designation that had been hers _unofficially_ for a year, sometime in the next few weeks, and he knew that she was ambivalent about the whole thing. She seemed to be doing her best to ignore that it was happening. She'd spent a fair few nights playing Wicked Grace with Varric in the back rooms of the Hanged Man, avoiding Hightown altogether.

"You look tired," she said, stirring him from his thoughts. She patted the couch next to her, shuffling over to let him sit down. She leaned into him as he settled, arranging herself so that her back was to his chest, his arms looped around her. From this vantage point, he could see that the book had some lurid illustrations that seemed somewhat improbable.

"Long day at the clinic," he said.

She made a soft 'mm' noise. He wasn't lying to her, not exactly. But he didn't have the heart to tell her that it was this horrific pressure that made the days seem longer, the desperate need that seemed to be growing to do _something_ that grew worse every passing day. They were Justice's feelings, he knew. And he was Justice, so they were his feelings.

But here, with her, it all seemed easier. She had been more than just a lover, this past year. She had been his partner. They talked, shared many things, helped each other out. That he could have had this earlier was a fact that gnawed at him. Perhaps it was the fact that she was not only his friend and lover but an ally was the reason why the tension lessened around her. The knowledge that she believed as he did, was willing to fight as he did, eased the anger at a world that did not care.

Occasionally he pretended that this was all he had to worry about: the woman in his arms and the sense of relaxed peace that stole over him. They were very pleasant fantasies, even if they never lasted.

"Messere?" Bodahn appeared in the doorway. "Ah, here you are, messere. A message has come for you, from the Chantry." He walked into the library, and held out a folded letter sealed with wax imprinted with the sun of the Chantry.

"Thank you, Bodahn," Marian said, taking the letter from her servant. She turned it over and over in her hands as he padded out with a surprisingly soft tread, smoothed her thumb across the seal. He could feel the sudden tension in her back and shoulders and stroked her arm to help settle her. After a moment, she took a deep breath and broke the seal with a loud snap and unfolded it.

"The Chantry's decided to recognise my status as Champion," she read, and licked her lips. "They're going to announce it tomorrow."

From his position, Anders could read it as well as she could, though he didn't say that. He could also see that the writer of the letter was the Grand Cleric herself. He wasn't expecting Marian to sudden growl under her breath and almost leap out of him arms and off the couch, balling up the missive and tossing it into the fire.

"I don't understand," she snapped, grabbing the fire poker and jabbing at the logs. Stoked flames welled up, consuming the paper quickly. "I'm a mage. They know I'm a mage. The Knight Commander knows I'm a mage. The nobility knows I'm a mage. Why would they recognise me? Why haven't I been hauled away and locked in the Circle or made Tranquil?"

The reason for her growing upset over the past few weeks became apparent to Anders in a sudden rush. She'd been waited for the axe to fall, and she couldn't understand why she was still alive. Her entire life had been based around the necessity of hiding who she was, something that even Anders had never really had to worry about in the Circle or the Wardens, and now, exposed, she was dangerously anxious.

Dangerous, because a frightened mage could do almost anything, as he well knew.

"Because you're the Champion," he said, trying to point into his voice all the calmness she lacked. "The Grand Cleric had two options. refuse to acknowledge you, in which case Meredith might have decided to take her chances with the nobility and arrest you, which might have caused a large problem when the nobility already resents her refusal to allow a new Viscount to be elected. Or, she could recognise you, granting a known apostate political power and influence, but keeping Kirkwall stable, its people pacified. In this case, dear Elthina is thinking of the greater good."

Marian snorted, and jabbed at the fire again. "That greater good which keeps her from seeing what's going on in the Gallows."

"She sees it. But she'll never chose sides. Willful blindness. The lives of the mages don't matter enough to her to make her willing to fight Meredith over them."

Marian's voice dropped to a whisper. "Makes me sick. If any Templar knew _half_ the terror and... and..."

He stood and crossed to her. He turned her to face him gently and drew her into his arms. "They'll understand," he vowed, and he wasn't sure if it was mostly-Anders or mostly-Justice that made the promise, but she sagged against him regardless.

"You keep me sane," she said, her voice muffled by the pauldrons of his coat. She rubbed her cheek against them, not unlike a cat, something he'd often teased her about. "I don't know what I'd do without you."

He kissed the top of her head. "Funny. I was going to say exactly the same thing about you."

~*~


	11. Breaking Point

**Breaking Point**

~*~

She lay beneath him, her hands twisted in the sheets, her eyes half lidded and the only sounds that she was making were limited to moans and panting. After two years as her lover, he knew exactly what she responded to, the places to caress, lick or gently nip to reduce her to incoherence, and it granted him a certain amount of masculine pride to be able to do so.

He trailed his fingers between her breasts, leaving a thin trail of ice that instantly melted on the heat of her body. She gasped at the sensation, and he grinned, bending down to lick the water droplets from her skin. Most mage apprentices learnt how to mix magic and sex about ten minutes after the idea occurred to them, but Hawke had spent her life as an apostate, never interacting with other mages who weren't family, and the first time he had breathed lightly charged air over her nipples, she had yelped and she'd nearly levered herself off the bed, eyes wide.

She'd proved a very able student in this particular magical art.

In time, it had led to innovative forms of study that he'd never considered whilst an apprentice at the Circle. Hawke had taken it upon herself to learn Force Magic, the local speciality, after she'd picked up books on the subject left behind by apostates Anders had once helped smuggle out of the circle ( _no more, though, never risk that again, never lose himself, or was it too late already?_ ). The most important aspect of Force Magic was the utter focus required for it, and she'd asked him to do his best to distract her while she practiced the spells. Perhaps she'd thought he would try to freeze her with ice, rather than topple her backwards onto the bed and put his mouth between her thighs. Anders preferred his idea, though, and, after a time, so did she.

He reached for the Veil, snagged just a tiny thread of the Fade, weaving it into lightning. The look of it on this side of the Veil was impressive, blue and black light wreathing his hand, but the shock delivered by the spell wasn't even as powerful as that you would get if you shuffled your feet upon the floor and touched something metal. It would barely tickle along the less sensitive parts of the body, but applied in just the right place-

A hoarse, mindless noise tore itself from her throat. She was long since beyond coherence. They'd been here for what felt like hours as he teased her on the very edge of her climax, pulling back every time he felt her start to tip over. It might almost have been cruel if she didn't so very obviously love it. In the beginning, when they were still learning each others' bodies, she would curse and mutter deprecations, begging and pleading for release. With time had come trust, the realisation that he wouldn't leave her unsatisfied, and curses had been left behind as she gave him free reign over her pleasure, putting her faith in him.

It was a heady feeling, almost addictive.

And suddenly, too much to bear. He bent, kissing her throat. To have kissed her lips would have been to muffle the delightful whimpers that she continued to utter. Then he pressed inside her, slowly, torturously, their bodies flush against each other. One of her hands left the sheets only to knot in his hair, tugging with enough force to be just this side of painful. He didn't have a hand free to dislodge her, though, even if he'd wanted to. He held himself there, buried to the hilt inside her, and stilled. He waited, holding onto an iron control he'd barely known he was capable of a few years ago, and in a clearer-headed moment he might wonder if this was a post-Justice development, but she was twitching, trying to push up against where he had her pinned against the mattress. He held still for just a moment longer than he knew she wanted to, then he starting moving, slowly at first before picking up the pace.

She didn't last long. As close as she had been, it was the work of only a few moments before she threw her head back, voice rising, and her body spasmed, muscles clenching around him. He kept up his relentless pace, as she rode the waves out, revelling in the look of utter abandon on her face.

He lost himself not long after, the world suddenly far away, unimportant, and the only thing that mattered was pure sensation. He had just enough of his wits about him to catch himself before he sagged on top of her, resting his weight on his forearms against the mattress instead. She stroked his back as he caught his breath, and he felt the tingling sensation of raw Fade energy against his skin. She had lost conscious control of her magic for a moment, enough for the Veil to manifest visibly about her skin. He knew without checking that the Veil was solid, it was showy, and a mark of a powerful mage that she could cause motes of Fadelight to cling to her skin, but she was never in any danger of tearing the Veil because of inattention. Her eyes were soft, wide and dark, and she seemed to be gathering herself before she blinked and focused on his face above her.

She looked up at him, and smiled, the last little wisps of light dancing over her skin before being reabsorbed into her body, and he knew that he'd never seen anything so beautiful, never seen anyone he loved so much. Inside him, something crystallised. The part of him that was just separate enough to be called Justice thought of his love for her as an obsession. It was, in a way, perfectly true. His desire for justice for the mages of Thedas had become more and more intertwined with his need to love her, to protect her, to see her happy and safe. To do _nothing_ to ensure a future in which she was free and happy was almost physically painful.

That future could never happen in Kirkwall. Not with Meredith squeezing the Circle tighter and tighter, not with Elthina stubbornly refusing to do _anything_ about her Knight-Commander's tyranny. How long before Marian's political influence stopped protecting her from Meredith, or before Meredith stopped caring?

Something had to be done, and Anders realised that he'd just decided to break her heart.

She seemed to realise there was something wrong. She reached up, hands stroking his neck, his back. "What is it?" she asked, softly.

He couldn't tell her. He couldn't say that he realised that the only way to do anything about the simmering tensions of Kirkwall was to uncover them and let them boil over, to refuse to allow terror and tranquility to continue in the name of 'keeping the peace' because it was easier and more pleasant than admitting things had to change. He couldn't say that he could see the end of their relationship coming. So he kissed her, deeply, passionately, and she held him tightly, returning the sentiment just as firmly. "I love you," he said, when they paused.

"I love you too," she said, and just to disprove any idea he might have had that he'd successfully distracted her, she tilted her head, "What's wrong?"

He shook his head and couldn't say the words that he really ought to. _I'm sorry_. She was used to his mood swings, though, so she just petted his hair as he put his head to her bosom and listened to her heart beat.

~*~


	12. Forgiveness As A Sin

**Forgiveness As A Sin**

~*~

Aveline hadn't left the city with them. She had a husband and a city to look after, so she bid them farewell at the gates as they made their hurried departure, and showed the only moment of softness that Anders had ever seen in her when she allowed Marian to embrace her tightly and whisper goodbyes. The pain on Hawke's face was obvious to him; Aveline was her best friend, and they were parting for the first time in nearly ten years.

They left the city, he, Hawke, Merrill, Varric and Fenris, though he knew that the group wouldn't last. Fenris and the others weren't wanted criminals the way he was, and would be free to pursue their own path. All Anders had to look forward to was a life on the run, what he couldn't believe was that Marian had chosen to join him, and had done so without any apparent hesitation.

The other reason that he knew the others would leave was that none of them would look at him. That ignored his presence, rather than yelling or trying to kill him, was probably a virtue of Hawke's presence.

They made camp halfway up Sundermount, and as night fell the eerie glow from the still burning Chantry could be seen clearly. It turned the horizon a malevolent red-orange hue, and he wondered, abstractly, how long it would be before it was finally brought under control. Normally the Chantry would employ ice-mages to control fire on this scale, but there were no mages left in Kirkwall. They had all fled to other Circles, those that hadn't been killed.

He was fully prepared to sit outside all night, on the makeshift seat that was his pack, when Marian Hawke appeared in front of him, and grabbed his collar. The wicked metal spikes of the Champion armour she had taken to wearing dug into his skin.

"If you don't get in that tent," she told him, brusquely, "I'm going to drag you in there kicking and screaming."

The others all politely ignored the scene, fussing with their own tents or supplies. Anders didn't offer a word of argument and followed her into her small tent. Inside, he found that she'd already laid out two bedrolls side by side. It was a tiny tent, and there was no way they could stand, so he knelt, and she followed him to the ground, kneeling before him.

She didn't let go of his collar, but used it to pull him closer until she could wrap her other arm around him and bury her face in his shoulder. He folded his arms around her in return and breathed in her scent. He'd taken such pains to memorise the feel of her before they had headed for the Gallows... had it only been earlier that day? He'd been convinced that there was no way he would survive. And even if he did, she would never forgive him.

Instead she was here, in his arms, sworn to follow him into certain exile.

"For a moment there I thought you'd reconsidered your decision to let me live," he said, trying to sound like he was joking instead of telling the truth.

Abruptly, the ire that had faded once they'd entered the tent returned.

"If you ever try anything like that again, I will." She drew back, twisted his collar and shook him sharply. The sheer blinding fury on her face took him aback. "'Mix them together and boom, Justice and I are free'? You son of a bitch. I told you never to leave me. Never. Leave. Me." She punctuated each word with a shake.

She wasn't nearly as strong as, say, Aveline, who had devoted her life to the physical arts, but her grip on his collar was just this side of choking. He still had enough breath to speak, though. "I don't blame you for hating me," he started, but she made a choked sound that interrupted him, and she embraced him again.

"You idiot," she told him, her voice muffled against his chest. "I told you I love you, didn't I? I couldn't hate you. And for a moment there, I really tried to." She pulled back, and her eyes were suspiciously bright.

They hadn't really spoken, only briefly exchanged words and promises as they waited for the Templars to come crashing down on them. She hadn't killed him, asked him to help her defend the mages, and then promised to go with him. Possibly she hadn't wanted their last words to be angry ones. "What stopped you?" he asked, half-fearful of the answer.

Marian sighed deeply and let go of his collar. She started loosening the buckles on her armour, and, without thinking, he brushed aside her hands to do it for her, as he had so many times before. "The fact that you were right. You forced the fight, but it would have come eventually, if not at your hands, then someone else's. It was inevitable. Of course," she smiled weakly, "It might not have been for a few more years, but you were still right. As for killing... I've killed, so many times. Did I ever tell you about that time with the Red Irons I... no. It doesn't matter. I just... I used to scrub under my nails to try and get rid of the blood. Never quite managed."

Unencumbered by gloves, her fingers seemed too slender, too pale. He gathered her hands in his and kissed her fingertips. "It never comes off," he agreed.

She sighed, and was silent as he finished unfastening her armour. It slid off to land on the ground with a satisfying thud. It left her in the under-armour, buckled leather that conformed to her figure closely. The first time she'd worn it, turning before him like a dressmaker's model, he'd taken great pleasure in peeling it away from her piece by piece. Now he left it on, and simply shucked his overcoat. It was too cold on the mountainside to strip off completely.

He lay down on the bedrolls, pulling her with him, and held her tightly against his chest. "I forgive you," she said, after they'd settled. "Maker knows you won't find much forgiveness in the world you've created." That hurt, but she was justified in what she said. She rubbed a hand over her eyes. "Turns out that I'm madder at Isabela for betraying me than I am you."

"Isabela?" he asked. "That was years ago."

"And if I ever run across the duplicitous bitch again I will kill her myself," Marian said, with sudden and surprisingly viciousness.

He touched her jaw gently, just enough to make her tilt her head up and to the side and let their lips meet. It was still as sweet as the first day he'd finally succumbed to all of his suppressed yearnings and she'd surprised him by not rejecting him. "You once asked me never to leave you," he said, "I have no right to ask the same of you, but the fact that you are here means more to me than I can say. But..." He didn't want to say it, but forced himself to do so. "I can't promise this sort of thing won't happen again in the future."

"I realised that when your eyes glowed, but your voice didn't change. You and Justice are closer than ever, aren't you?"

"Yes." Honesty was his only recourse.

"I love you," Marian said, half whispering. "I may be an idiot, but I love you. You're everything to me."

An idiot, and a little bit crazy if she was willing to stick with him. He had a moment to wonder if maybe, just maybe, some of the obsession he had with her was returned. "I don't deserve your faith."

Marian made a small sound that was nearly a laugh. "Faith and I have always been on good terms."

It wasn't a great joke, but he smiled nonetheless and kissed her hair.

Marian was silent for a long stretch of time, seemingly staring at his face very closely, searching for something. "Marry me," she said.

Struck dumb, he could only blink at her. When she didn't start laughing, or otherwise indicate it was a joke, he said, "I don't think we're going to find very many Chantry priests who'll oblige."

"I don't care about the Chantry," Marian said, "Marry me anyway."

"Yes." Because, really, what else could he say? In his arms was the woman he loved, who'd thrown away her life to come with him, who'd stood by him in defense of their kind, and had somehow forgiven him when he'd destroyed a Chantry and done his very best to break her heart and turn her against him. If there were any better candidates for marriage, it would have to be Andraste herself.

"Good," she said, and settled her head on his chest. "Now go to sleep. We have a lot of travelling ahead of us."

He kept his eyes open long after her breathing had evened into slumber, wondering when he was going to wake up.

~*~


	13. Where It Began

**Where It Began**

~*~

"Come with me to the Deep Roads." Marian Hawke, that lowtown scrapper, had reappeared in his clinic. He would have thought the maps he'd given her would have been the end of their association, and had dismissed her from his thoughts after the last time they'd spoken. He had other things to worry about than the attempts of some Fereldan refugee to make her fortune.

The fact that she was an apostate had made her slightly more interesting, but he'd honestly thought she'd never come and find him again. Apostate or not, most people who worked for mercenaries weren't big on building friendships, and when he'd shut down her attempts at flirtation, he thought that was the end of it, in spite of his offer to assist her if needed.

It was for the best, anyway, even if the light of her eyes, her brilliant, sharp eyes, kept haunting his dreams.

"I have patients," he said, raising his eyebrows at her, "People to heal. Things to do. Desperate attempts to maintain some sort of cleanliness in the cesspit of Kirkwall to attempt."

"How boring," she pouted melodramatically, and he smiled just a bit. She had a sense of humour, at least. "I would have thought a Grey Warden wouldn't hesitate at going into the Deep Roads."

He shook his head at her, folding a set of cloths that his assistants would boil to clean. "If I liked it so much, do you think I would have left the Grey Wardens?"

"Why _did_ you leave the Grey Wardens?"

"That's a bit of an impertinent question, isn't it?"

"Just idle curiosity." She sat herself on the unoccupied bed near where he worked, legs crossed demurely, a contradiction in the way she held the rest of herself, looking up at him coyly. "You're a fascinating person."

He folded a cloth with unnecessary vigour. "No I'm not."

"You're an apostate, an ex-Grey Warden, a healer." She was discrete, at least. "You're a _very_ fascinating person."

"I'm an abomination," he told her, sharply, and turned away, striding across his clinic to put away the cloths, assuming that she'd take the hint and leave.

He was bent over the corner table, fiercely intent on doing nothing at all, when he felt the warm length of her body pressed against his as she leaned over his shoulder, making it seem to anyone watching that she was looking at what he was doing.

"I didn't see an abomination in the Chantry," she murmured to him, her lips close to his ear, "I saw a man grieving for a much loved friend. If you think that's going to put me off, Anders, you don't know me very well at all." She drew back enough that he could turn his head to see her wicked smile. "You'll have to come with me to the Deep Roads for that."

This close, he could see the clear blue of her eyes, and feel her breath on his cheek. "Alright," he said, making an attempt to sound reluctant. "Just tell me when."

"You won't regret it," she said, cheerfully. She squeezed his shoulder and started away, pausing only as she walked to the exit to call, "I see this as the start of a beautiful friendship."

The part of him that was Justice watched her go along with him, and made it known that this was a woman with whom it would be disastrous to be involved with. Anders really couldn't help but agree. This was all a very bad idea.

~End~


End file.
